


C L E M E N C Y

by fireword_fallout



Category: Actor RPF, British Actor RPF, Tom Hiddleston RPF
Genre: Acceptance, Death References, Depression, Desperation, Drug Dealing, Execution, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Prison, RPF
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-08-31
Updated: 2012-09-07
Packaged: 2017-11-13 06:08:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Major Character Death, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 5
Words: 11,563
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/500336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fireword_fallout/pseuds/fireword_fallout
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>All of those feeble hopes, those possibilities, narrowed to a finite point and severed in his mind. All he could see was 6am on Friday.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Monday

**Author's Note:**

> A/N: I’m not usually one for Author’s Notes, but I felt like this one needed it. 
> 
> I apologize ahead of time if I offend anyone. That was not my intention. I came up with the idea, and it wouldn’t leave me alone. This is a terrible subject and I did not approach it lightly. I’m very fond of Tom Hiddleston and believe me when I say that it would break my heart if this really happened - if anything, that visceral reaction I had while thinking the story out, planning for it, and doing the research is what drew me to the project. This is a work of pure fiction. I don’t think there’s much more to say other than that.

The letter was delivered with his breakfast Monday morning. An envelope, thick with official business, with his name on it, was pushed through the gap at the base of the bars with his breakfast tray. He stirred from his sleeping mat when he heard the familiar clatter and slid across to the dish. He pulled it near to himself as he blinked away the last traces of restless sleep, like he did every morning since his incarceration in Changi Prison.

He shook the last of restless sleep from his eyes and was reaching for the stale roll next to the porridge when he saw the envelope sitting on the platter. His hand froze, and his whole body seemed to tighten. They’d said the date was randomly chosen. This couldn’t possibly be it, he thought, because it had only been two weeks.

Gathering his courage, he took a deep breath and cracked open the envelope. The heavy stationary crumpled under his fingers, and he eagerly extracted the note inside. He fixated on words and symbols at first without comprehension, struggling to find meaning, hope, in a message he dreaded reading.

“No,” he whispered, “Oh god, no…”

In four different languages, it said that Thomas William Hiddleston would be hanged that Friday, at 6am, for the crime of drug trafficking. It listed the date he was found guilty and the date of his arrest, with an official seal pressed into the lower right hand corner next to a judge’s signature.

It also informed him of the allowances he would have during the week – he would be entitled to a TV or radio, meals of his choice, and the time he was allowed for visitation with family members would increase from twenty minutes to four hours.

Tom let it fall loosely from his fingers, onto the cold cement between his legs, breath catching in his chest.

This Friday.

He laughed.

He just wasn’t…feeling it.

This was odd, because he was someone who once made a living feeling things he didn’t feel, or getting other people to believe he was feeling things he wasn’t feeling.

He should have been banging on the walls, grabbing at the bars and screaming…instead, he just sat there and stared, because it felt unreal. Overwhelmed tears formed at the corners of his eyes, and threatened to tear him down then and there, sobbing hopelessly into his arms like a child. He was caught between too many emotions, though, and none of them ever reached beyond the tangle in his gut. Numbness spread from the center of his chest – the same kind of artificial warmth he felt after drinking hard liquor.

As soon as the appeal failed, he’d known this day was coming. By law, the date was not set at trial, and was instead revealed later. Every day, he waited. When it didn’t come the first day or the second or the third, he relaxed, tricked himself into thinking he had a month. Then he tricked himself into thinking he had two months. Then, maybe, in that period of time, the sentence would be overturned. His sister, Sarah, could get a high ranking bureaucrat to look at the evidence again, or the British ambassador would cut a deal with the Singaporean government. All of those feeble hopes, those possibilities, narrowed to a finite point and severed in his mind. All he could see was 6am on Friday.

His heart sank when he realized his mother, father, and sisters must have been informed Thursday or Friday of the week before he was, and he couldn’t imagine what they were going through.  Sarah, who had been at his side from the very beginning, left that morning to meet with a journalist in Queenstown. She must have missed her hotel mail before she left. Either that or she did receive the notice, and it only inspired her to redouble her efforts.

Sarah would be back on Wednesday morning. He calmed himself with the thought that his parents would have received the notification, and would probably be flying in to Changi immediately. It would be torture to see his mother and father, not be able to touch or hug them, but he was gladdened when he thought of seeing them again. The reality hadn’t quite sunken in that a few spare hours would be all he had with them. One always thought they would have forever with the people they loved, or some huge amount of time that might as well have been forever. There was the expectation that he would be able to share his life with his friends and family. The possibility of loss, of death, was always there, but it was expected to be either sudden or petered out over a length of time – immediate or terminal. Either a sudden, irreplaceable gap, or a long process full of goodbyes with uncertain outcome. The anxiety created by being able to count the hours, to know the exact date and time of death and being helpless to do anything about it, was maddening.

The idea that he could count the hours he had left made him dizzy. Counting Wednesday, when Sarah arrived, he would have twelve hours of visitation. He had three more full days to live, and he could not share even one of those with the people he loved most. His mind started spinning out of control, logging what he had with what he could have had – twelve hours contrasted with days, weeks, months, years.

He requested tea when the prison guard came back, and showed the letter proving his date of execution. There was nothing else that seemed appetizing enough to overcome the flat heaviness in his stomach. He’d try to ask for beer later maybe. For now, all he wanted was tea.

He went through the rest of the day in a dull haze, fixating on the minor tasks and comforts they allowed him. Twice a week, he was given the opportunity to brush his teeth, wash, and shave out of a bucket and a washbasin he could barely fit into to bathe. That increased to every day now that he had his date. A permanent layer of grease seemed to have settled over every part of his body, and it wouldn’t matter, but he wanted to feel human again. He scrubbed until his skin was raw, grateful for the soap and the water to rinse in. He shaved with a dull razor that never left the line of sight of the guard. When he was done, he dressed back into his light grey jumpsuit. His skin felt hot, almost sunburned, and his face itched. Still, he felt better than he had in a while.

He was now entitled to have a TV or radio set up outside of his cell. Tom wanted to watch TV; he wanted nothing more than to be taken in by an actor or a writer or cinematography. Then he remembered that his case was creating something of an international sensation. There would be interviews going on, clips of the movies and TV shows he’d been shown in. That wasn’t something he was ready for yet. When the guards came to bring him out to the exercise yard, he asked for a radio.

The chains around his ankles were removed so he could run around the small yard. Running without being able to swing his arms was difficult, but he managed for the sense of freedom that jogging gave him, something he was in short supply of. The other condemned prisoner who shared Tom’s time slot merely sat on an old bench and studied a flock of birds that flew overhead. Tom then went over to the pull up bar (little more than a bent piece of pipe), where he did the rest of his routine to keep his muscles toned. Pushups, pull ups, lunges, and dips for rapid thirty second intervals left him delightfully sore.

After the training he’d done for the role of Loki, exercise became a mantra for him. As an actor, he needed to stay fit, and it was always part of his routine. The intense training he did for the first _Thor_ movie left him with such an ingrained sense of physical exertion that he now felt wrong if he missed a day. Throughout the entire ordeal, he would have gone mad without the opportunity to work out twice a day.

By the time he returned, a small, old fashioned black radio was resting in the center of his cell. Immediately he began tinkering and playing with the knobs until he urged the first crackle from the speakers.

He listened to a Chinese language station on Singaporean radio. He could speak a little Chinese, learned mostly from other inmates. After being moved to death row, and the isolation therein, he didn’t have anyone to talk to. Something about the rhythm and beat of the language was familiar now, even without understanding everything that was said. He listened to what felt like an endless slough of pop songs, resting on the mat in his cell, closing his eyes, and doing his best to lose himself in them.

He requested dinner with rice, meat, and beer. None of the components were high quality, but it was within the prison’s budget, and the closest thing to real food he’d seen in a very long time. The meal tasted good enough that he was able to down it despite his anxiety. When the chicken felt too dry, he drowned it with beer. For the first time in months, he was left with a warm, happy feeling in his stomach, a temporary physical aloe to the storm of uncertainty.

After dinner, he went back to fiddling with the radio.

He could change the channels. Reception wasn’t stellar, but he found one English station with a multitude of classics from the 60s onward.

He let himself drift away in the chords and clear vocals; closing his eyes, he tried to visualize the sound waves and soothe the pounding in his chest.

The day went on. Sometime after lights-out, when he needed to turn off the radio, he curled around his knees and cried silently into the mat, not allowing himself audible sobs. The people next to him could probably hear the subtle shift in his breath, and it was a common enough sight on death row that little was probably thought of it. He fell asleep exhausted and pained. Next morning, he would wake up with his eyes stinging, the batteries on the radio having run out, and to the reality of his death writ sitting, neatly folded, in a corner of his cell.


	2. Tuesday

He was given thirty minutes of exercise, twice daily. That didn’t change. Two condemned prisoners were let out into the exercise yard at a time. When Tom saw his exercise partner, he cursed his shitty luck.

“So,” Sean Harpe said, standing perfectly still. As much as Tom had lost weight since they were arrested, the former cameraman only seemed to have gotten stockier; Tom wasn’t sure if it was fat or muscle. “Did they give you your date yet?

Tom had once thought himself incapable of hate. He knew what anger and loathing felt like, but he never thought there was a part of him that could wish death upon someone else with the kind of fervor he felt towards Harpe. That should have been doubly true now that he was faced with it himself…for Harpe, he made the exception and nurtured it.

“This Friday,” he answered after a long time.

“Sucks to be you, mate.”

Tom flinched when those words came out of Harpe’s mouth, and some animal part of him wanted nothing more than to lunge across the yard, wrap his hands around the other man’s throat, and _squeeze_.

But that would solve nothing, and Harpe had nothing to lose.

“Why?” Tom asked, and he was surprised to see the resentment didn’t permeate his words. “Why did you put the cocaine in my suitcase?”

Harpe, for the first time, looked truly ashamed. He’d spent the last several months doing his best to insist in a court of law that Tom Hiddleston was the ringleader, and he was the poor staff member he’d tried to pin it on. Now, there was nothing to be lost from honesty. “I had an overflow. I needed to stash the rest somewhere.”

“Why did you lie in court?” A lie that failed and condemned both of them, Tom refrained from adding.

“Just trying to survive,” Harpe replied, squinting against the sun. “I am sorry I dragged you into this, mate, you aren’t a bad guy.” He didn’t sound sorry.

The coal in Tom’s stomach ignited and it took everything he had not to walk over and punch Harpe. “Then _tell them_ I had nothing to do with it.”

Harpe lifted his hands, an expression somewhere between an apology and something else, something sociopathically similar to ‘too bad so sad’. “When _I_ might still get my pardon? I’m sorry, I really am, but if there’s even the smallest chance I could get out of this, I’ll let you swing.”

It was a different kind of anger he felt at Harpe than the anger he felt after his London mugging a few years ago. Then he was held at knifepoint. This sort of helplessness surpassed that. Harpe was sinking, and he’d tied Tom to him.

Tom thought of the grief of those that loved him, the simple _unfairness_ of it all. Harpe had no family, no one who would miss him – he’d informed Tom of such multiple times, and yet, here he was, fully willing to drag someone else down. And they were in fact, sinking someplace cold and dark, where no one else could find them. It was petty and selfish.

“You were just afraid of dying alone,” Tom said. “Not enough of a man to face it on your own. You’re _fucking pathetic_.”

“An actor giving a speech,” Harpe replied, a smile trickling onto his face. “Never seen that before. I really wish I could be there because I think you are going to pick _kick ass_ last words.”

Tom had enough of this. He walked over to the gate and requested to be taken in early. Over his shoulder, he spat the only insult he could think of. “Go fuck yourself.”

Harpe just laughed as the guards reattached Tom’s chains, and Harpe called him naïve, whatever that was supposed to mean.

Later that day, there was considerable commotion further down the hallway. An alarm sounded, and several guards gathered around a cell. Tom could just barely see them from where he was, and he could see enough to know something was wrong and they were concerned. Within an hour, he saw the prison doctor walking past him, bearing a stretcher with a covered body. Immediately afterwards, the guards initiated a surprise search of the block.

Tom was forced to press his hands against the back wall while two guards checked the mat, toilet, and his jumpsuit for signs of anything illicit. It felt wrong, he pondered, to have them invade the only area he had left to himself, and then reminded himself that they weren’t doing a cavity search and he should be grateful.

“What happened?” He asked.

One looked at him with a harsh, severe glance that promised violence. “Shut up. None of your business.”

The one giving him a pat-down explained after a moment of thought, voice softer than his partner’s. “Harpe. The one who was arrested with you. He killed himself with some sort of mixture after he received his execution date earlier today. Nobody knows how he got it.”

Tom listened. A small, strained laugh bubbled up and threatened to turn into more tears.

Harpe, who was willing to let Tom hang to save himself and only laughed when Tom relayed the date of his execution …had committed suicide the second he found out when _he_ would die. The hypocrisy, the waste, was astounding.

Harpe was the only person who could have confessed to planting the drugs in Tom’s suitcase. Tom felt anger, cool and ugly, resent that Harpe couldn’t have waited until after making a statement before taking his own life.

It was one last slight, one last, nasty act in a life that had been nothing but nasty acts, from what Tom could gather. Poor fortune put him at the receiving end of it.

What a cruel, petty person.

It also left him starkly aware that one more avenue was now closed to him. The dead weight concealed in the plastic bag that passed earlier was a grim token, and a reminder that Harpe was now beyond his reach.

Tom hated him for that.


	3. Wednesday

The next morning, after breakfast, he was removed from his cell by two guards and walked to the prison hospital. Like everything else, it was made out of cement with a layer of paint thrown over it – a sickly abomination of color caught somewhere between cream, light green and light blue. When he asked what was going on, they weren’t as forthcoming as the young man yesterday was. He didn’t force the issue. They led him to a small, private room in the back corner of the medical bay, and told to wait.

Several minutes later, a doctor came in, curtly told him he would be getting a physical exam, and began without ceremony.  Tom did whatever he was told and swore he would be smelling latex for the rest of the day.

About halfway through, the doctor left and a small, older man in a suit entered, face as gravely serious as the doctor’s had been. He directed Tom over to the scale in the corner, took down his weight on the notepad he carried, and instructed Tom to stand against the ruler next to it, where he then took down his height.

“I always prefer to do this part myself,” the older man started, and Tom got the sense that, no matter what he said, he continued to wear the same expression. “He’s a good doctor, but I feel as though it’s part of my duty.”

“What is?” Tom mused innocently, suddenly glad to hear someone speak to him.

“Your height and weight. The initial records taken in when you’re arrested change sometimes. It’s not usually a big difference. I still like to check. I feel better about calculating the drop that way.”

At those words, Tom stiffened and jolted away slightly from the other man, watching him out of the corner of his eye, sudden revulsion and a need to get away overpowering any rational thought. Morbid curiosity told him to memorize the face of the person that would kill him; another part didn’t want to know. Tom was caught in the middle, and stared at his feet instead. “You’re…the hangman.”

“I suppose that’s accurate enough. I prefer to think of myself as a technician,” he corrected, voice flat.

“What…?” Tom’s voice faltered.

“It’s best not to speak.” He responded. “I will say that I have been doing this for many years and I have never botched a single hanging. It’s over very soon, if that’s any sort of comfort to you. – I’ll see you on Friday.”

“It’s not.” Tom leaned against the wall, played with the chains. “Is it hard?” He blurted as the other man turned to leave.

“I just told you it’s nearly painless.”

“Not that,” Tom’s own voice sounded empty of emotion, “your job. Killing people.”

 “Does the butcher sympathize with the cow?” He turned to face Tom, face still that haunting, flat expression. “I provide a service. Someone else decides their fate – your fate. I am a vehicle.”

“And it doesn’t feel wrong to you? To profit off of death.”

“People who think of it that way don’t last long.” Folding his hands behind his back, he walked back until he was face to face…or as close as he could get. He was short and age had bent his spine. “I provide a service, and when the people of Singapore decide there is no longer a need for that service, I will stop and never look back.” He looked Tom up and down. “It’s been a long time since I’ve spoken to one of you.”

“Why? I thought that was the practice.”

“Not anymore. Removing bias is essential. Imagine I spoke to you and didn’t like you, and dictated that you should suffer. It’s not my place to decide that, so I avoid the circumstances that might change my judgment. Or if I decide I like you, and that prevents me from performing my job. It’s best for both of us, really.”

“Then why speak to me?” Tom couldn’t understand the calmness running through him. His nerves should have been on edge, but they weren’t. Speaking to the man who would kill him felt like an opportunity, it took some of the mystery out of the process, the low hum of anxiety he felt left with it.

“I’ve never hanged a celebrity before,” the old man answered, the barest hint of a smile at the corners of his lips. It wasn’t a cruel smile; Tom thought this man was above that. It was a smile born of strange circumstance.

Tom smiled in response, but it didn’t reach his eyes. “I’m afraid if you ask for my autograph I’m not inclined to give it. You understand.”

“I do. I was only curious about what kind of person you were.”

“I found myself wondering the same thing about you,” Tom replied. “Thank you for indulging me.”

The man inclined his head slightly and shuffled out of the room, letting the doctor know that he was done.

The doctor returned, finished the rest of Tom’s physical. In the end, he informed Tom that he was, in fact, rather healthy.

“Don’t you think that’s a bit ironic?” He asked as the guards came to collect him again. The doctor gave him no response or sign that he’d heard. Tom let it go.

He was informed that he had a visitor and was taken immediately to the meeting room. This was also a cold place, with empty stalls and a huge pane of glass between prisoners and their visitors, usually either family members or legal counsel.

Sarah, his older sister, was waiting for him. As soon as she saw him, her eyes brightened with happy recognition and a smile that squeezed down at the corners with restrained tears. They picked up the phones on their respective sides and said their typical greetings, all with a greater sense of pressure than normal.

“I suppose you know,” Tom started.

“I do,” Sarah replied. “I saw the notice when I came back this morning…god , Friday…It’s too soon.”

“It’s about seventy years too soon,” Tom joked darkly.

She looked at him as if she couldn’t tell if he was joking or not, and wiped one tear from her eye. Immediately, she launched into a relay of her meeting with her contact, and the possibility of speaking to someone on the cabinet. It was a longshot, but something she would pursue.

“I’m sorry, if I’d known – “

“You would have done exactly the same thing,” Tom’s voice was lighter than he felt.

“If there’s even a slight possibility, it’s worth it.” She added, leaving out that it meant she’d traded time with her brother in exchange for that slim chance.

 “When will mum and dad be here?”

Sarah looked away.

“Sarah – “

“Mum can’t make it,” she blurted, the words rushed out, “neither can dad.”

“What do you mean they can’t make it?” They were notified of the date before he was; he’d thought they would be coming.

“There was a problem with their Visas. They had to go back after your appeal and…we thought we had more time. A couple more weeks, at least. They can’t make it. God, Tom, I’m so sorry.”

“So you’re telling me I won’t even get to see my parents one last time?” He laughed, even as tears formed, because he felt like it couldn’t get any crueler. “The last time I saw her was when my appeal failed.”

“Tom…”

“I told her everything would be okay, Sarah. That was the last thing I said to her.” At the conclusion, his mother broke down sobbing, and he reached around to hug her and tell her everything was fine. He held her right up to the moment the guards guided him away. It seemed like such a stupid, obvious lie now. “Now she doesn’t even get to say goodbye.”

“Emma will be here tomorrow,” Sarah offered, looking restrained, like she wanted nothing more than to hug him, hold him. “I won’t stop trying.”

That was the moment when Tom realized that she might not have given up; she might still have fire in her eyes. He had given up. He sat, numbly, knowing as the hours ticked away, the chance of reprieve diminished, and the raw nerve of fear was being worn away to the point where he felt nothing. His breath was shaking; he was having a hard time holding the phone. “I love you…”

Sarah’s eyes glistened and her face twisted, and she pressed her palm against the thick glass between them. He could see all the things she wanted to say, all the things she thought she would have a lifetime for. Now, it all came out as a choked sob. Some women, actresses – Emma, for one - were trained to be pretty when they cried.  That wasn’t true for his older sister. She was a journalist, and she wore truth, she wore pain, readily and honestly for what it was.

The physical separation was most distressing to Tom. He’d always been an incredibly tactile person, so not being able to _hug her_ when she looked like that made him twist his fingers into his jumpsuit and want to scream.

Seeing her cry tore him apart as much as the envelope informing him of his date of execution had – it took that wound and ripped it raw again. The one blessing in his parents’ absence was that he wouldn’t have to see them cry. It would be too much. Tom gently lifted a hand, matched it to hers over the length of thick glass.

All she could say was, “I won’t stop trying,” again and again and again until the guards told her their time was up. His sister had a kind of iron will – it had led to squabbles between them, as with any brother and sister, but he saw it in her stance as she left and wiped away her tears.

As he was walked back to his cell, all he could think was that he didn’t want her to try anymore. Ever since this began, Sarah acted like she was going to war. Every friend, every contact, every media outlet, anything she could do to gather attention or support for the case, she’d approached it viciously since the beginning. She’d been fighting for his life, and he realized he’d just been hoping everything would work out. Growing up in Britain, the thought of a death sentence seemed…absurd. Hanging wasn’t something that happened to people anymore. Until he lost the appeal, he hadn’t quite believed what was happening.

Now, less than 48 hours before his scheduled execution, it became real in a sudden, brutal way.

Friday, just before 6am, he would be walked to the gallows at the heart of the Changi Prison, and he would die.

He was taken back to the death row cell that had been his home for weeks now, and he was hit by the miasma, the strangeness of this situation. He was struck by the little cot, the toilet in the corner, three walls, a ceiling, a floor, and a door with bars on it. It was simultaneously claustrophobic and lacking of any privacy.

He felt a world away from the life he’d lived in Britain and the US. The realization that even his mother and father would be unable to see him one last time drove a final, terrible wedge into his own mind. The isolation was almost as bad as anything. If he were dying of cancer, he would be surrounded by people who loved him. Here he wasn’t just faced with death – he was cut off, completely, from the life he’d led.

Sarah hadn’t left his side since it all began, but she was consumed with the need to save him, for which he would be eternally grateful. A part of him still wished she would just…give up and spend as much time with him as she could. She’d never do that, though, and she would follow anything that had the slightest chance of saving him.

Emma, who was coming tomorrow, would be his last link to everything he knew.


	4. Thursday

Thursday morning, he finally watched television. The channels were limited, but he found a couple of things in English, mindless enough that they would allow him to gather his courage before watching the news. He started with a Korean soap and tried to understand what was going on without subtitles. There was a Singaporean cooking show in English that he lingered on for some time, cataloguing various techniques for cutting parsnips and preparing chicken broth.

Finally, he turned to the news stations.

He wasn’t the primary focus, but he came on about 15 minutes after a segment on the expected rise of oil prices in the next ten years.

 _“…One year ago, British actor Tom Hiddleston was accused of drug trafficking in Singapore when he was found with over 30 grams of cocaine while attempting to leave the country,”_ a blonde reporter for the BBC began – he remembered, vaguely, seeing her speak before and thinking she seemed clever, _“Hiddleston claimed he was unaware the substance was in his bag. Four months ago, he was found guilty by a Singaporean court. His last appeal failed two weeks ago, which leaves him subject to Singapore’s mandatory death penalty. The trial has sparked considerable international attention and appeal from the government of the United Kingdom for clemency. The United States embassy has also stepped forward informally to ask for further review of the evidence. We now go to a clip from a debate hosted on FOX News last night.”_

The newswoman glanced down to her notes as the teleprompter paused and the image changed to footage from an American network.

There were four men sitting around a table – one of them was the commentator leading the discussion. One elderly politician with a red tie sat adjacent to a chief publicist for the Singaporean ambassador. To Tom’s surprise, Robert Downey was seated at the opposite end of the table, looking impressively confident. He grinned at the memory of working with Robert, Bob Downey. It seemed like a lifetime ago now, and when he reminded himself of it he felt a surge of giddy joy.

The men went around, introducing themselves one at a time. Robert smiled sheepishly when it was his turn. _“Hi, I’m Robert Downey Jr., and I have no idea what I’m doing here.”_ This garnered a chuckle from the other attendees. _“No, I’m serious. I feel like there should be a diplomat here, or a lawyer. A therapist. Someone who could actually do some good.”_

The commentator smirked. _“Let’s just call you a character witness.”_

 _“I don’t see how that helps Tom much, but okay.”_ He smirked, but there was the hint of something harder underneath it. _“I feel as though a miscarriage of justice to this degree requires a professional, not a celebrity.”_

The young government worker gave the actor a patient smile. _“That was a little aggressive, don’t you think?”_

_“Frankly, I’ve looked at the evidence – what evidence has been released, and I’m feeling a little aggressive. Wait, wait – can I finish before you start talking again?”_

_“I just don’t think you have all the facts.”_ The man was pleasant and he interrupted with an amiable smile. _“My heart goes out to Mr. Hiddleston’s family. It does. But there are very good reasons why Singapore has these laws in place.”_ Tom halfway expected him to take a dig at Robert’s famous brush with the law, but the young man refrained. _“We cannot treat him differently because of his celebrity or his nationality.”_

_“Nobody is asking you to –“_

_“ -You can talk about the evidence all you want, but I feel as though this debate has become needlessly about Singapore’s application of the death penalty. I’ll add that there is no international law against capital punishment and an overwhelming percentage of Singaporeans support it. Our streets are some of the safest in the world.”_

_“Do you even hear yourself talk? I’m not arguing any of that. I’m just looking at the facts.”_ Robert shifted, looked towards the cameras. _“What about Hiddleston’s case specifically? How do most Singaporeans feel about it?”_

_“There are no official numbers.”_

_“And why is that?”_

_“Don’t you think you might have a bias?”_ The young man redirected.

 _“Maybe a little bias is good. Do I believe drugs were found in his suitcase? Yes.”_ Robert enunciated every word with a tap on the table in front of him. _“Do I believe he knew they were there? No. Do I believe he was carrying those drugs with the intent to sell? Absolutely not. He’s a good person, he doesn’t deserve this, and the grounds for the decision that’s been made are shaky at best.”_

For the first time, the older politician spoke up. _“Look, I’ve been very vocal in the past about the possibility of the United States looking to the Singaporean model as a way to expand our War on Drugs.”_ At this, Robert laughed bitterly, and the politician lifted a hand to silence him. _“But as a citizen of the international community, I’m very concerned by the lack of transparency and due process involved in this young man’s case.”_

 _“Look, under Singaporean law, when someone owns a parcel or container or property in which illegal substances are found, it is assumed that they knew the contents of that container. Thirty-five grams of cocaine were found in his bag, which is more than enough to justify a trafficking charge.”_ He swallowed, let what might have been compassion seep into his voice. _“We don’t take this lightly. Human life is a precious thing. However, other people have been executed under very similar circumstances to the one Mr. Hiddleston found himself in. We owe it to them and their families to be consistent.”_

 _“Consistency doesn’t mean much if you’re consistently unfair,”_ Robert forced.

After that, it dissolved into a four-way argument between them all, and went back to the BBC broadcast.

The anchor readjusted her notes. “ _Unless a pardon is granted by the President of Singapore, Hiddleston will be executed this coming Friday._ _Fans and friends are planning candlelight vigils worldwide tomorrow as a show of support for Hiddleston and his family. His family still hopes to see the sentence overturned. As of today, the Singaporean government stands behind its decision and its implementation of the death penalty for drug related offenses.”_

The topic shifted to a hurricane, and Tom reached through the bars to turn it off.

No matter what happened tomorrow, he was…touched. He knew he had supporters, including some big names in the US and Europe, but seeing the images of them rallying together brought him a degree of happiness. He’d touched these people, in some small or large way, and they were fighting for him.

He knew it was too late. If no difference was made thus far, he doubted the next 24 hours would see anything change.

It reminded him that he was _so glad_ he’d lived his life and met the people he did. It reminded him that people were capable of impossible cruelty and incredible selflessness.

Sarah came to visit as soon as the rules allowed for it. She knew she wouldn’t be able to stay long – she didn’t want to take up Emma’s time with him, and she told him about another mission that she hoped would get _someone_ to look at the case again. The way she said it told him she was grasping at straws.

“Sarah,” he asked, interrupting her tirade, “what about funeral arrangements?”

She stopped and looked at him, fiddled with the telephone cord. “Yes. I’ve been looking into that. Emma’s going to take care of the rest of it tonight.”

Tom nodded, trying not to think of the strangeness of needing to ask about his own funeral.

“If, um, if it happens,” Sarah continued quietly, “we’ve made arrangements to take you back home.”

She looked irrationally injured, and like she knew it was irrational and didn’t want to comment on it.

He pressed his fast into his hands. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have asked.”

“No, it’s fine,” Sarah affirmed. “That’s a reasonable thing to ask about.”

“Not when you’re trying so hard,” he replied.

“You’ve given up, haven’t you?”

He glanced up, glanced down. “There’s not much I can do about it, myself. I know people…I’m so grateful, so unbelievably grateful but…”

She made a little sound somewhere deep in her throat. “No.”

“Sarah, I don’t want to argue right now.”

“I’m not trying to _argue_ , Tom, for heaven’s sake. _This isn’t right.”_ Her voice came out low, almost primal. “They have no right to do this to you.”

Tom felt her anger, her helplessness, and he wanted more than anything to make it better for her. In that way, he was glad it was almost over. “They think they’re right. I thought you of all people would understand, after your post in India.”

“I do,” she hissed, “I know…I just. I don’t want to lose you to this. We’re so close. Just a little bit more pressure and they’ll break. They have to.”

“They don’t,” he said, and there was a hard edge with it. He added, softer, “they don’t have to do anything.”

“I know that, too,” even though he wasn’t looking at her, he could hear the tears in her voice. “But Tom, I can’t stop. How can I live with myself if I don’t do everything I can?”

“I’m not asking you to stop,” he said, “but I need to be realistic for my own sake.”

They both had things they needed to do to get through this. She needed to keep fighting – he needed to stop. They parted with that last, uncrossable rift between them.

After Sarah left again to make one final appeal to anyone who would listen, Emma came to him.

He expected tears. Instead, Emma walked into the meeting room with a slight bounce. She shook with something he didn’t want to place, her fingers quivering violently as she took the phone and her smile seemed fake and fractured.

“Jeanine had her baby,” she sputtered, false happiness dripping over the words.

Tom took the cue. “Did she now?” he replied, forcing his own smile. “How’s John taking it?”

“What do you think? He’s terrified of being a daddy.”

Tom smiled, this time it was very real. These were mutual friends, people they’d known in college that had stayed friends with them over the years.  “I’m so glad to hear that. What about Lana? How’s she doing?”

“Oh, you know,” Emma quipped, sarcastic jealousy in her voice, “Well. She’s doing well. Oh! You won’t believe the conversation I heard on the plane yesterday…”

Tom had been expecting something else. He’d pictured the same brutal grief Sarah showed him earlier that day, he pictured his divorced mother and father in the same room together, crying over their son, who might as well have been the walking dead, waiting for Friday morning a world away and confirmation of his passing. He expected pain.

Instead, Emma was giving him something else, the last gift she could give him – normalcy. She was giving him something that he didn’t know he was missing, something he assumed he would never have again. It was an impossible gift. He knew Emma; he knew she was hurting as much as any of them. Had their roles been reversed, he wasn’t sure he could have given her the same thing.

She would be his last visitor. Sarah continued to work frantically for clemency and his parents were far from reach. Emma recognized that she couldn’t help much on that front, and instead, made sure Tom’s last memory of his family wasn’t pain and tears, that her last memory of her brother wasn’t blinded by grief.

As they chatted, she relaxed; they laughed together.

“Thank you,” he said, when he knew their time was almost up. “Emma, there’s one more thing I want you to do for me…”

In the pause, he could see the agony bubbling up in her again. “Anything.”

He gave her several things he wanted her to tell their parents. She would tell them that he was braver than he felt, and pass along his love to them.

He also gave Emma a password and two messages under 140 characters.

Emma laughed. Weak as it was, the sound was honest. “Your Twitter account, Tom? At a time like this, that’s what you’re concerned about?”

He smiled back. “I’m terrified, Emma. I don’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow.” A knot formed in his throat again. “I don’t know if I’ll be able to walk myself over there or if they’ll have to drag me. I don’t know if I’ll be overcome by some profound peace or if I’ll piss myself.” He shrugged his shoulders. “I just don’t know. But those messages I gave you? That’s something I can control. That’s an image. Even if my dignity fails tomorrow, I have that.”

“And that’s enough, really?” Emma sounded skeptical.

“I guess it has to be.”

After a long pause, she added, “Prospero, though? I thought you’d quote Hamlet.”

The tears at the corners of his eyes finally fell with his smile. “If you don’t mind, I was in the mood for something a bit more upbeat.”

“Careful,” Emma warned as a guard gave them their five minute warning. “I’ll just quote Romeo for you.”

He groaned. “Good lord, not Romeo. Anyone but Romeo.”

Emma closed her eyes and leaned in to press her forehead against the glass, smiling softly as tears trailed down to her chin and dripped onto the counter. “I love you, Emma. I love everyone.”

“I don’t know what we’re going to do without you,” Emma whimpered. “This is the last time I’m going to see you. This will never be okay. Nothing can make this okay.”

“Come now.” He did his best to keep his voice comforting, because he was still her big brother. “You were doing so well. Don’t break the act.”

“I love you, too.”

Nothing else they could say would ever be enough. They spent the remainder of the time in silence, simply enjoying their closeness and each other’s company, gathering up precious moments and trying to catalogue them forever, so that she could have something to remember him by, and he could have a kind memory to hold him until morning.


	5. Friday

He didn’t sleep that night.

He didn’t listen to the radio.

He didn’t watch television.

Tom sat in a corner of his cell, legs crossed and back propped against the wall, dressed in a crisp, plain white outfit that had been given to him with dinner, and became well acquainted with his mortality.

He had exactly six hours left to live, and he wanted to spend it with his own thoughts. Until morning, he would keep a quiet vigil, think about his mistakes, his triumphs, everyone he’d ever loved or kissed or teased. Windows in prison cells were a thing of the past, and he wished he could have been able to see the moon. Exercise sessions were only ever during the hot, clear Singaporean day, never at night. It felt strange to wish for something so simple, to hold all those memories and wishes in his hand and feel them draining through his fingers like sand.

Religion wasn’t something he cared to dwell on – spiritualism was a different matter, but the hard lines drawn by religion always seemed more exhausting and constricting than supportive for his tastes. In some vague way, he’d always accepted the idea that there was continuation of self. He didn’t know what that looked like. No one did. Figuring he’d know soon enough, he always dismissed it, and used death as a motivator. No one lived forever, and he redirected those thoughts into doing something positive, experiencing as much of life as he possibly could. He didn’t want it to be over, of course, but he didn’t feel like he’d wasted it, either. Not everyone could claim the life he had.

They weren’t really taking his life, he pondered. They were _ending_ it, perhaps, but his life was his own. No one could truly take that from him.

Tomorrow, there would be plenty of time to be afraid – and he was sure it would be agonizing. For now, he forced it away and told it to come back later. Everything, all the worry and fear of the last year was coming to a head, and just once before he died he wanted to _enjoy_ something again. He could not change the outcome, so he endeavored to step away from his situation for a time. He relaxed his whole body, let the tension ease away. He smiled fondly at the memory of his first kiss. He remembered when the family dog had bitten him, and he’d tried to cover and clean the injury himself out of fear she would be taken and put to sleep. He remembered in college, when Emma cried on his shoulder after catching her boyfriend cheating at a party. He still remembered telling her how smashing she looked, and that that boy was a fucking tit who would just have to miss out.

When he was a child, his mother would take him to the theatre she managed, and he would watch the classes and rehearsals with awe, hiding behind a row of chairs because he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to be there or not. The first time he acted on a stage in primary school still brought the same, excited flare to his chest.

He’d given Emma one quote from _The Tempest_ to be some of his last public words. He had another in mind for himself.

“And my ending is despair,” he recited, voice barely above a whisper in the confines of his cell, “unless I be relieved by prayer, which pierces so that it assaults Mercy itself, and frees all faults. As you from crimes would pardoned be, let your indulgence set me free.”

 _The Tempest_. Shakespeare’s last play and performance. Tom couldn’t think of a more fitting monologue to roll over his tongue and hold what little peace he could in the hours before dawn. No one was sure if Shakespeare wrote those words or not, but Tom liked to think he did. It mattered little at this point, for either of them.

He wished for more time. He hoped he would keep his dignity when they walked him to the execution chamber. He wished that his sisters, parents, and friends would all live full lives after he was gone. The real suffering would be theirs. He would be like Harpe soon and reminded himself that he could only die; they were the ones that had to live with the aftermath. His sisters, everyone, had been so strong throughout the whole thing, and he wished for them to have just a little bit more.

A thousand little things came to him, things he thought he’d forgotten.

He took those bright memories and gathered them together, holding them close to his heart and remembering that no matter what, no one could take those things from him. Even if there was nothing afterwards, and he wasn’t sure, because no one really knew, he believed he would live on in the imprint he’d made in the world. It wasn’t always perfect – there were many things he wished he could have taken back, but overall, he’d done his best to leave things better or at least not leave them all mucked up when he was done.

The satellite test center at NASA had been made into his own personal playground for a day.

It was more _life_ than most people ever had the chance for.

Tom wasn’t sure when he drifted off, exactly, but surrounding himself with all the love and kindness he’d experienced gently lulled him to sleep. He hadn’t slept deeply, because there were no dreams and he was still in the same position seated in the corner of his cell. The only difference was that the lights were on and there were three men standing outside his cell. The warden of the prison had brought two guards, clothed in a special, plain uniform he didn’t recognize, and was rapping lightly on the bars with a baton.

Tom looked up, and the fact that hours had turned to minutes hovered over everything.

“That time then?” he asked no one in particular, rising to his feet with loud cracks and pops as they unlocked the doors and closed in on him. One guard produced a pair of handcuffs and Tom’s hands were bound behind his back with a little pinching and the harsh sound of metal on metal.

The other guard had a black hood, and Tom cringed away from it. “Is that necessary?” he directed his question towards the warden, sounding infinitely braver than he felt.

The warden didn’t answer, and instead motioned to the guard to place it over Tom’s head. Tom squeezed his eyes shut as the guard draped it across his face, rolled down the edges until the black cotton was nested at his shoulders. He could feel his hot breath against the hood, the slight wetness around his mouth, and the darkness he was immersed in. This wasn’t something he planned on. He thought he would at least be able to see until just before it happened. He felt suddenly claustrophobic, and the guards had to each take one of his arms and keep him walking with each uneasy step.

About three steps outside of his cell, Tom lurched forward and sicked all over the inside of the hood. His confused guards let him drop to his knees, and one took the black cloth off as another wave rose up from his gut, splattering chunks of his last meal against the sterile floor. He sputtered and heaved until they came up dry and wracked his body to no avail. His guards were cursing violently, because this had never happened before and they didn’t have a spare on hand.

The warden ordered another guard to go get one of the others, because apparently the hood was required by law to be clean. The younger man nodded and went bolting off. Motioning towards Tom, the warden said, “Let’s keep him moving.”

In an incredible act of mercy, one of his guards took a clean edge of the filthy hood to wipe at his chin and left it behind for the janitor to throw away. He thanked him in a hoarse whisper. Tom took a deep breath, swallowed the taste of bile, and helped them drag him to his feet, even as one shoe slipped slightly on the vomit all over the floor.

They were on their way again, only this time Tom could see the prison go past them, the hallways that had grown familiar after a year. In a couple places, they went right instead of left, a route he didn’t recognize that took them out of the cellblock and down a long, empty hallway that connected two buildings.

He kept the tide of panic at bay simply by focusing on putting one foot in front of the other. He fixated on little things, like how the guiding hands of the guards were the first human contact he’d had in months, or the way he could see paint peeling and cracking in places.

They reached the end of the hallway and came to a single, iron-wrought door, painted a sterile white. Tom looked it up and down, mouth agape slightly as he tried to pull air in, because he wasn’t entirely sure he remembered how to breathe. One guard undid the heavy bolt outside with a loud clank that filled the entire hallway like a booming voice, crushing more of the resolve that Tom gathered the night before.

This is it, he thought.

The room wasn’t like any gallows he’d ever seen in movies or on the stage. It was a room with a metal landing, safety railing where it dropped off to a pit at the edge, and a single metal crossbeam with a rope dangling from it. The noose itself wasn’t as he would have expected – not the dramatic six-loop he’d seen before as a stage prop. Instead, a simple bronze eyelet was looped into a hemp rope. At the base of the loop, the rope was bound with leather. Below it, there was an outline on the floor in bright red. Adjacent to it was a lever, bound into the metal of the floor, also painted a brilliant shade of red.

His eyes drifted around, from person to person – from the prison doctor, to the warden, to the guards, to the hangman. He felt, all of a sudden, completely in the moment and completely disassociated from what was happening to him. He swayed and probably would have fallen without the guards holding him up. Distantly, he heard footsteps in the hall, heavy boots of the third prison guard carrying a fresh execution hood.

“It’s about time,” the warden growled in a voice that implied someone would be getting a demotion soon.

Water was pooling in Tom’s eyes again, hot and full of fear and god this would be the last time he ever cried.

As the hood was draped over his face, he closed his eyes and the tears fell. He was led a few more steps before he was urged to stop, and he could feel the brush of the noose as someone looped it over his head, tightening and positioning the eyelet just under his jaw and hugging the cloth to his skin. Reflexively, his throat jumped at the sensation.

He waited. Years. Weeks. Days. Hours. Minutes. Seconds. His life was now narrowed to seconds. One breath, another breath, dragged from nothing as he waited and hoped that the executioner’s watch was off by a minute, because right then he would have given anything for just one more minute. He realized his hands were straining against the cuffs, their hard edge cutting into the skin of his wrists.

He tried to comfort himself by saying it would be over soon, but that only compounded the fell terror already threatening to overcome him. Heat flooded his whole body, and a layer of cold sweat was collecting under his uniform and down his arms, warming his face and the feeling of the noose around his neck. With the full expectation that each moment would be his last, he became acutely aware of every sight, sound, smell, and sensation.

He almost passed out with fear when a series of loud, frantic knocks echoed on the metal door, the sound impossibly loud in Tom’s ears. His whole body jerked when he heard it. He tried to cry out, only no sound came, just ragged, fearful gasps.

Behind him, the door was opened. Tom heard one voice, thick with physical exertion and hastily declaring a message – along with the sound of rapidly flapping paper. A second voice – the warden’s – spoke quietly and curtly in the corner with the newcomer, and took the envelope from the other person. Tom waited an eternity for him to read it.

Hope settled dangerously into his heart, and Tom froze. He didn’t even want to _breathe_.

The warden spoke, voice clear with surprise, or maybe it was distaste. “By order of the office of the President of Singapore, Thomas William Hiddleston has been granted a three-hour stay of execution.” Then read the date, and some further official language he didn’t understand.

Tom’s chest was heaving so much he could barely understand those words.

It wasn’t a pardon.

That simple action, having that hope only to have it taken away, and knowing he would be forced to do it again in three hours, was too much.

He _shattered_.

His knees buckled underneath him and he sobbed into the hood, his breath catching in front of his mouth and pulling it in when he tried to pull in a breath. The noose loosened and came with him, the rope spooling around him as he collapsed to the floor and curled around himself. He smelled paint through the hood, felt the cold metal of the floor.

Someone gripped his neck and removed the noose.

“No,” he begged, “I can’t do this again. Don’t make me do it again.”

He was picked up and carried, a dead weight in the arms of the guards. He felt as though he’d cried himself out, and simply went limp. It was too much for him to handle, and he drifted away from himself, took one hollow breath after another as he studied the weave of the hood and thought the speckles of light he could see reminded him of starlight. He was still breathing, that at least he was conscious of, but he shut everything else out.

They laid him down on the mat in his cell. He blinked against the overhead lights. He didn’t change position when the cuffs were removed, and when he looked up, all he saw was pity. Turning away, he curled around himself. Three hours sounded like an impossible eternity to wait to go back to that room.

Tears were flowing again. A raw, guttural scream filled the cell block, bouncing off of every wall and echoed in mind. He was disgusted at the grief and pain in that voice long before he realized he was the one screaming.

Silence fell as he waited for the guards to come and pacify him, but they never came.

His whole life, he’d never thought of himself as an especially strong person. Optimism served him well and kept him happy. Throughout the trial, sentencing, and appeal, he never thought of himself as strong, merely passable and hopeful that the sentence would be overturned. There was always that part of him - in his life before it went to hell - that hoped if he was ever faced with something so terrible he would exceed his expectations and face it with the kind of grace one saw in fiction.

Framing and imprisonment hadn’t broken him.

His execution didn’t break him.

His short reprieve did.

Now, he didn’t even have the strength to stand. They would have to carry him back there, and they would have to strap him to that board he’d seen in the corner. This was simply cruel, and he would no longer be party to it.

Detachment overcame him, and he gladly embraced it. Everything seemed to pass by him in a dream from that point onward, and he welcomed the delay from reality, because maybe he could make it through this without losing anything if he pretended this was happening to someone else.

Not too long afterwards, the guards came back. The warden said something he didn’t understand. Tom glanced up at the other man, seeing his lips move without hearing him. Unlocking the door, they stepped inside, and Tom remained curled up on the mat as the warden addressed him again.

After an unspecified amount of time, a third guard came back and poured a bucket of water over Tom’s head.

He let out a yelp, scurrying to his feet and scrabbling for the corner, banging his knee on the toilet. Between the water and the pain, he came crashing back into himself. Wiping the water from his eyes, he finally met the warden’s eyes and at least partially acknowledged his presence.

“You’ve been given a full pardon,” the warden said again, bending down to press a second envelope into his still-wet hand, “you are free to go.”

Tom kept staring at him, and then he just clutched the envelope tightly to his chest while the two guards urged him to his feet.

He was cuffed again, but they took him away from the chamber, in the opposite direction. He didn’t even try to pay attention to the twists and turns. Everything blurred together in his mind. Bars, that terrible pale paint and the hum of industrial lights above all flowed one into the other. He was lucky he’d already thrown up, because otherwise he would have again.

They took him to the processing center near the outer wall of Changi Prison. There the handcuffs were removed, and he was given the box of things he had when he was arrested. Still utterly confused, he stripped from the clothes they’d had him wear and left them in a lump nearby. He changed into the thin, grey t-shirt inside the cardboard box. He changed into underwear and blue jeans that had been sitting there for a year. Socks, shoes came on in tow, and his hands were shaking so much he barely had the cohesion to tie the laces. He pulled on his thinnest black jacket, and he took the rest of the things – his wallet, his passport, phone, and sunglasses were all there. The rest was with his luggage, and was probably still evidence, but he was glad to leave it behind if it meant he could leave as quickly as possible (in case the President changed his mind, Tom wasn’t sure he could even do that, but he wanted to leave before he found out).

He was given an official copy of his pardon, and sent into the release zone, a length of fence that ran from the processing office to the outside lay before him, and he felt his feet sliding on the gravel as he struggled to stay standing. Dawn was a hint on the horizon, rapidly becoming brighter over the cityscape and filling the sky with light.

Once outside, he was immediately accosted by harsh camera flashes as Singaporean police worked to hold a perimeter around the outside. A hundred or so people were gathered near the entrance. He blinked and stared at the ground, still reeling.

“Tom!” He heard someone yell, and his sisters came running to him. Emma got there first, squeezing her arms around him as Sarah grabbed his face and placed a kiss on his cheek. He wrapped his arms around both of them on reflex, and they led him to a black car near the din of people, where he saw a friend waiting for him.

“Jeremy?”

“Jesus, Tom,” the man who played Hawkeye walked up to him, placed one hand on Tom’s shoulder as his sisters ushered him towards the car, a long, tired smile floating across his face as he alternated between hugging Tom and not hugging him. “ _Jesus_ , you gave us all a fucking heart attack out here.”

They got into the car, which was air conditioned, which caused the layer of sweat on his skin to grow cold and clammy. Tom sat on one side, Emma sat next to him, and Sarah took the seat opposite, next to Jeremy.

Emma was pressing her face into the crook of his neck, and he had one arm wrapped around her. “I’m never letting go of you again.” Her voice was shaking with everything from elation to simple exhaustion. “Oh god we thought we were too late.”

He refrained from telling them they almost were. They didn’t need to know how close it was. “It came in plenty of time.” He looked up to Jeremy and when he spoke, his voice felt void of emotion. “What are you doing here, Jeremy?”

“Robert roped me into it. I wanted to help, any way I could, and he thought I could do some good if I flew over – I’m not as high profile as some of the others. They thought it would seem less aggressive.” Absently, he flicked a speck off of the leg of his suit. “Sarah and I jumped through some flaming hoops and talked to some of the members of the President’s cabinet – or really, we talked to the people who could talk some of the members of the President’s cabinet. We convinced them pardoning you would be a wonderful act of mercy – aka a fantastic publicity stunt. Tom, they were already thinking about it based on the evidence against you. We just needed to convince them that it wouldn’t make them look weak if they did.” He let out a heavy sigh, and pressed his palms into his eyes. “We didn’t know they’d wait until the _last fucking minute_. When there was no announcement at six we thought…” he waved his hand. “You know what we thought…”

“I know,” Tom replied. He looked to his older sister. “Sarah-“

“Don’t even,” Sarah said. “You’ve thanked me enough. I’m just glad you’re _alive_.” She ran a hand over her face. “Oh good lord, I’m shaking. I can’t believe how close that was.”

“Thank you, all of you.” He was going through the motions, but it was all too surreal. Less than half an hour ago, he’d been moments away from death, expecting half a second in the drop, and then nothing. Now, he was sitting in a paid car with his sisters and a colleague, on his way home.

“We’re going straight to the airport – we still need to deal with some clearance, so we’ll be here for another couple hours, but after that, we’re out of here,” Jeremy explained, an unspoken, group nervousness settling his voice. They all felt like this was too good to be true, and none of them wanted to watch that taken away from them by a change of heart or a clerical error. After fighting so long and so hard, they all just wanted to leave Singapore with Tom alive and manage a stately scurry. Stress hovered like a fog in the air, and they were all too happy to leave.  “Bob chartered a plane to take us to L.A. Your parents are going to meet up with you there. Afterwards, you all fly back to London together.”

Tom was staring vacantly out the window. None of this felt real. Then he remembered the sweet, burning sensation and the fuzziness still coating his tongue. “I um…is there any water?”

Emma reached into her purse, pulling out a water bottle. Tom cracked the seal and took a long drink. It was almost too warm to drink, but it soothed his throat. “Thank you.” He coughed lightly. “My um, my phone battery’s completely dead. I need someone’s phone.”

“I already called mum and dad,” Sarah affirmed, and Jeremy tossed him his phone, which Tom dropped, and picked up from the floor, he pressed the back of his neck into the leather of his seat as Emma clutched his hand, Sarah watched the city go by, biting her nails and Jeremy looked incredibly relieved. Everyone in the car had been up all night, probably.

Soon, they would leave Singapore, and he would do the best he could to pick up the pieces.

The problem was that there was a part of Tom that wasn’t sure he’d left the execution chamber yet. Sight and sound told him where he was. It told him he was free, alive, and going home, but the suddenness told a different story. It was beyond fresh in his mind. He waited for the same relief that came when one awoke suddenly from a nightmare, but it wasn’t coming.

“I thought you would,” he admitted, “I can’t right now.” He needed to talk to his parents later – it was a conversation he desperately wanted to have with them, but he wasn’t ready, not while there was still a jitter in his voice. “There’s something else I want to take care of.”

He logged on to Twitter, his fingers shaking so much he could barely input his password.

The last two entries, input by Emma at his request, sat near the top.

**_“We are such stuff as dreams are made on, and our little life is rounded with a sleep.”_ **

Then, at the top of the feed was one, simple word, and it felt like a punch in the gut to see it written out in type. Telling Emma to post it last night had broken his heart a little.

**_“Goodbye.”_ **

Taking a breath, he steadied the shaking in his hands long enough to fumble with the touchscreen. He had one message, and this was the fastest way to get it out. He had to type it several times, forcing away the clumsiness in his fingers to make it perfect.

**_“I’m alive.”_ **


End file.
